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The primary goal ofWorld Civilizationsis to present a truly global historyfrom the development of agriculture and herding to the present. Using a unique periodization, this book divides the main periods of human history according to changes in the nature and extent of global contacts. This global world history text emphasizes the major stages in the interactions among different peoples and societies, while at the same time assessing the development of major societies. Encompassing social and cultural as well as political and economic history, the book examines key civilizations in world history. World Civilizationsbalances this discussion of independent developments in the world's major civilizations with comparative analysis of the results of global contact.

Peter N. Stearns

Peter N. Stearns is provost and professor of history

at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D.

from Harvard University. Before moving to George

Mason University, he taught at Rutgers University,

the University of Chicago, and Carnegie Mellon,

where he won the Robert Doherty Educational

Leadership Award and the Elliott Dunlap Smith Teaching Award. He has

taught world history for more than 15 years. He currently serves as chair

of the Advanced Placement World History Committee and also founded

and is the editor of the Journal of Social History. In addition to textbooks

and readers, he has written studies of gender and consumerism in a world

history context. Other books address modern social and cultural history

and include studies on gender, old age, work, dieting, and emotion. His

most recent book in this area is American Fear: Causes and Consequences

of High Anxiety.

Michael Adas

Michael Adas is the Abraham Voorhees Professor of

History and a board of governor’s chair at Rutgers

University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Over the

past couple of decades his teaching has focused on

patterns and processes of global and comparative

history. His courses on race and empire in the early

modern and industrial eras and on world history in the 20th century have

earned him a number of teaching prizes. In addition to texts on world

history, Adas has written mainly on the comparative history of colonialism

and its impact on the peoples and societies of Asia and Africa. His

books include Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and

Ideologies of Western Dominance, which won the Dexter Prize, and the recently

published Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and

America’s Civilizing Mission. He is currently writing a global history of the

First World War.

Stuart B. Schwartz

Stuart B. Schwartz was born and educated in Springfield,

Massachusetts, and then attended Middlebury

College and the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.

He has an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University

in Latin American history. He taught for many

years at the University of Minnesota and joined the

faculty at Yale University in 1996. He has also taught in Brazil, Puerto

Rico, Spain, France, and Portugal. He is a specialist on the history of colonial

Latin America, especially Brazil, and is the author of numerous

books, notably Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society

(1985), which won the Bolton Prize for the best book in Latin American

History. He is also the author of Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels (1992), Early

Latin America(1983), and Victors and Vanquished (1999). He has held fellowships

from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Institute for Advanced

Study (Princeton). For his work on Brazil he was recently

decorated by the Brazilian government. He continues to read widely in

the history and anthropology of Latin America, Africa, and early modern

Europe.

Marc Jason Gilbert

Marc Jason Gilbert is the holder of an NEHsupported

Chair in World History at Hawaii Pacific

University in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a former University

System of Georgia Distinguished Professor of

Teaching and Learning. He received his Ph.D in history

in 1978 at UCLA, where he built his own program

in world history out of a mixture of more traditional fields. He is a

founding member of the World History Association and one of its initial

elected officers.More than a decade ago, he founded and served as executive

director of the Southeastern World History Association. He has codirected

two Summer Institutes for Teaching Advanced Placement World

History. He has attempted to bring a global dimension to the study of

south and southeast Asian history in numerous articles and books, such